ali mongo: king of san francisco

It is my pleasure to introduce you to a man who goes by the name of Ali Mongo - a sliver of a man born around 1815 in Mongolia who has lived in over 89 countries, has 8 teeth left, eats only Guiness and Cognac, sells hot dogs and his paintings for money, and is probably one of the happiest people I have ever met in my life.

We got to know Mongo at the 7K Bridge to Bridge Run in San Francisco last week after he offered us free pretzels. We asked him what he wanted to do before he died and he indulged us with a glimpse into his extraordinary life, the majority of which I couldn’t understand through his toothless mongolian accent, but from what I gathered, I liked.

mongo and duncan sharing a “laugh”

What I could decipher from that conversation was that one of Mongo’s dreams was to have his art featured in an art festival in Berlin. The next day, we realized that we may actually be able to help Mongo with his dream, but having no way of contacting him, we were forced to do a little detective work on the streets of San Fran. With a little leg work, we were told about the main cafes where Mongo usually ‘kicks it’ and sells his art work. After about 3 hours of questioning people and searching, we found Mongo sitting at one of the cafe’s sipping on a guiness with a box of art.

When we told him that we had tracked him down to take some pictures of his art so that we could send them to a Berlin Art Festival he was so ecstatic that he started laughing, hugging us, saying things in his toothless mongolian english that I couldn’t understand. With a twinkle in his eye he ordered another bottle of cognac and told us more about his wonderful life. We joined him for a drink, snapped some photos, bought some of his artwork and listened to a bit of his broken wisdom.

I was left with the imprint of a man who has next to nothing yet has done just about everything and has the smile to prove it. My hat goes off to you Mongo, see you in Berlin!